Contra AOC, You Don't Have To Be a Billionaire To Be a Leech |
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Contra AOC, You Don't Have To Be a Billionaire To Be a Leech
There are makers and moochers on every rung of the income ladder.
Christian Britschgi | 5.8.2026 11:30 AM
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Barack Obama's "you didn't build that" comment during the 2012 election, part of a larger argument that successful entrepreneurs ultimately derived their wealth from public investments, was widely considered a gaffe at the time.
In retrospect, the former president sounds downright capitalist. A decade and a half of leftward drift in the Democratic Party has given us the likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), who argues that not only did you not build that, but if you're rich enough, you actually stole it.
The New York congresswoman went viral yesterday for comments she made on comedian Ilana Glazer's podcast describing any billionaire's wealth as inherently unearned.
"You just can't earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they're worth, but you can't earn that," said Ocasio-Cortez in the middle of a longer spiel about how capitalism forces people to "internalize" economic hardship as their own fault, and not the result of wider capitalistic forces.
AOC: "There's a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. You can't earn a billion dollars. You just can't earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they're worth, but you can't earn…........